Shortly after school started last fall, a high school student went on B’nai Brith Canada’s website to report an upsetting anti-Semitic act.

The student sent a video that had been posted on Facebook showing four Grade 7 students chasing and harassing a Hasidic Jewish teenager on the street.

“They called him a dirty Jew and he was so afraid he had to crawl under a fence to get away from them,” said Janna Minikovich, who answers calls on the group’s anti-hate hotline.

After B’nai Brith officials contacted the principal, the students were suspended, participated in a cultural awareness program and did some community service with a Jewish organization.

“The students didn’t physically assault him, but they thought it was funny or a joke,” Minikovich said.

B’nai Brith has recorded threats against Jews across Canada for 35 years, and officials said on Tuesday that 2016 was a record-setting year for anti-Semitic acts.

In 2016, there were 1,728 incidents of anti-Semitism, a 35 per cent increase from the 1,277 cases in 2015, the Jewish advocacy group said. Twenty per cent of the incidents were related to Holocaust denial, a big jump from five per cent in 2015.

Officials said it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why there was such a large increase in the overall number of incidents.

However, an increase in Holocaust denial and other anti-Semitic comments on social media, anti-Zionist sentiment on university campuses and anti-Israel feeling in some Arabic newspapers were factors, they said.

“In the past, Holocaust deniers used town meetings, podiums in the park and newspapers, but now it’s so easy to set up a website, a Facebook page or a Twitter account to propagate Holocaust denial,” said Allan Adel, the National Chair for B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights, which compiles the data.

While anti-Semitic incidents increased across Canada in 2016, there were fewer cases reported in Quebec last year. The audit shows that there were 249 incidents of anti-Semitism in 2016, down from 265 in 2015. Vandalism against Jewish property also dropped from 70 incidents to 27, but harassment went up from 191 incidents to 219 in 2016.

B’nai Brith Canada said it estimates that only 10 per cent of anti-Semitic incidents are reported to authorities.

The group said it does not believe that the election of U.S. President Donald Trump led to an increase in anti-Semitism in Canada. Between September and December 2016, the number of reported incidents decreased during the run up to the U.S. election in November and the month after, the report shows.

Officials say they often contact social media organizations like Facebook and Twitter to request that they take down pages or close accounts that spew anti-Semitic hate,” said Harvey Levine, B’nai Brith’s executive director for Quebec.

In some cases, accounts have been taken down, only to return a few days later under a new name. “The social media aspect has become very big,” Levine said. “Why stand on a corner and yell: ‘you’re a dirty Jew,’ when you can do it on social media and have everyone in the world see it?”

Levine said there continues to be an increase in anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment on university campuses across Canada, including at McGill and Concordia Universities.

He said pro-Palestinian groups at Concordia are promoting boycotts and sanctions against Israel and make it uncomfortable for Jewish students to stage counter protests.

“There are many Jewish students who feel they don’t have a safe place at Concordia,” Levine said. “If they protest and try to respond, they are cursed and threatened and feel unsafe.”

Levine said he is happy the Montreal police have finally set up a hate incident unit. “This is something that we have pushed for and the police are responding very well,” he said.

Minikovich said she is getting more calls from non-Jews who are reporting acts of anti-Semitism. “They see swastikas being spray-painted on the street or a person being harassed and they want to report it,” she said. “People are becoming more aware and they don’t want to tolerate it.”

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